Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I can only take the minister’s word for it, but that is not how it has been put to me. We can only take that as it has been placed. Are we looking at the scope of the potential levy remaining as it was initially or is there some threshold that is going to be put in place? Can the minister give some advice as to what that might be?

I note Senator O’Brien’s comments with respect to regulations being available to Senate committees and/or the Senate prior to passing legislation. When debating a previous piece of legislation I acknowledged that previous practice has been not to provide regulations as part of the legislative process. A number of senators on both sides of the chamber over a period of time have expressed frustration with that. I do note that the government has on occasion—one occasion was with the PBS cost recovery bill, which was a very similar process to this one—provided to the committee involved the regulations so that they could be considered by the committee. Senator O’Brien did make comment about that. In a very similar set of circumstances with another piece of legislation—and this is more a comment than anything else—the government made the regulations available so there was time for the Senate committee to scrutinise them before the legislation came before the Senate.